Situation of Pales tianity with the Eastern religions must be traced in their reaction upon the new religion of the West. By their treacherous alliance, they probably operated more extensively to the detriment of the Evangelic religion than Paganism by its open opposition. Asiatic influences have worked more completely into the body and essence of Christianity than any other foreign elements; and it is by no means improbable that tenets, which had their origin in India, have for many centuries predominated, or materially affected the Christianity of the whole Western world. Palestine was admirably situated to become the centre and point tine favou. Of emanation for an universal religion. On the confines of Asia and rable for a Europe, yet sufficiently secluded from both to be out of the way of gion. the constant flux and reflux of a foreign population, it commanded new reli Egypt, and, through Egypt, associated Africa with the general moral kingdom. But it was not merely calculated for the birthplace Judaism. of an universal faith by its local position; Judaism, as it were, in its character (putting out of sight, for an instant, its divine origin) stood between the religions of the East and the West. It was the connecting link between the European and the Asiatic mind. In speculative sublimity, the doctrine of the Divine Unity soared to an equal height with the vast and imaginative cosmogonies of the East, while in its practical tendencies it approximated to the active and rational genius of the West. The religions of Asia appear, if not of regularly affiliated descent, yet to possess a common and generic character, modified, indeed, by the genius of the different people, and, perhaps, by the prevailing tone of mind in the authors and founders of new doctrines. From the banks of the Ganges, probably from the shores of the Yellow Sea and the coasts of further India, to the Phoenician borders of the Mediterranean, and the undefined limits of Phrygia in Asia Minor, there was that connection and similitude, that community of certain elementary principles, that tendency to certain combinations of physical and moral ideas, which may be expressed by the term General Orientalism (1). The speculative theology of the higher, the sacerof Orient. dotal, order, which in some countries left the superstitions of the vulgar undisturbed, or allowed their own more sublime conceptions to be lowered to their rude and limited material notions, aspired to the primal Source of Being. The Emanation system of India, according to which the whole worlds flowed from the Godhead and were finally to be reabsorbed into it; the Pantheism into which this degenerated, and which made the collective universe itself the Deity; the Dualism of Persia, according to which the antagonist powers were created by, or proceeded from, the One Supreme and Un character alism. (1) Compare Windischman, Philosophie in fortgang der Welt Geschichte. Windischman was a friend, I believe I may venture to say, a disciple, of F. Schlegel, and belongs to the high Roman Catholic school in Germany. His book, which is full of abstruse thought and learning, develops the theory of a primitive tradition diffused through the East. Purity of mind. of matter. created; the Chaldean doctrine of divine Energies or Intelligences, the prototypes of the cabalistic Sephiroth, and the later Gnostic Eons, the same, no doubt, under different names, with the Æon and Protogenes, the Genos and Genea, with their regularly-coupled descendants in the Phoenician cosmogony of Sanchoniathon; and finally, the primitive and simpler worship of Egypt; all these are either branches of one common stock, or expressions of the same state of the human mind, working with kindred activity on the same visible phenomena of nature, and with the same object. The Asiatic mind impersonated, though it did not, with the Greek, humanise every thing. Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, the Creative and Destructive energy of nature, the active and passive Powers of generation, moral Perfection and Wisdom, Reason and Speech, even Agriculture and the Pastoral life, each was a distinct and intelligent being; they wedded each other according to their apparent correspondences; they begat progeny according to the natural affiliation or consequence of ideas. One great elementary principle pervaded the whole religious systems of the East, the connection of moral with physical ideas, the inherent purity, the divinity, of mind or spirit, the inalienable evil of its antagonist, matter. Whether Malignity Matter co-existed with the First Great Cause; whether it was created by his power, but from its innate malignity became insubordinate to his will; whether it was extraneous to his existence, necessarily subsisting, though without form, till its inert and shapeless mass was worked upon by the Deity himself, or by his primal power or emanation, the Demiurge or Creator of the existing worlds: on these points the different national creeds were endlessly diversified. But in its various forms, the principle itself was the universal doctrine of the Eastern world; it was developed in their loftiest philosophy (in fact, their higher philosophy and their speculative religion were the same thing); it gave a kind of colouring even to their vulgar superstition, and operated, in many cases, almost to an incredible extent, on their social and political system. This great primal tenet is alike the elementary principle of the higher Brahminism and the more moral Buddhism of India and the remoter East. The theory of the division of castes supposes that larger portion of the pure mind of the Deity is infused into the sacerdotal and superior orders; they are nearer the Deity, and with more immediate hope of being reabsorbed into the divine essence; while the lower classes are more inextricably immersed in the grosser matter of the world, their feeble portion of the essential spirit of the Divinity contracted and lost in the predominant mass of corruption and malignity (1). The Buddhist, substituting a moral for an here (1) The self-existing power declared the purest part of him to be the mouth. Since the Brahmen sprung from the most excellent part; since he was the first horn, and since he possesses the The uni versal pri mary prin ciple. Ascetism. ditary approximation to the pure and elementary mind, rests, nevertheless, on the same primal theory, and carries the notion of the abstraction of the spiritual part from the foul and corporeal being to an equal, if not a greater height of contemplative mysticism (1). Hence the sanctity of fire among the Persians (2); that element which is most subtle and defæcated from all material corruption; it is therefore the representative of pure elementary mind, of Deity itself (3). It exists independent of the material forms in which it abides, the sun and the heavenly bodies. To infect this holy element with any excretion or emanation from the material form of man; to contaminate it with the putrescent effluvia of the dead and soulless corpse, was the height of guilt and impiety. Source of This one simple principle is the parent of that Asceticism which maintained its authority among all the older religions of the remoter East, forced its way at a very early period into Christianity, where, for some centuries it exercised a predominant influence, and subdued even the active and warlike genius of Mahometanism to its dreamy and extatic influence. On the cold table-lands of Thibet, in the forests of India, among the busy population of China, on the burning shores of Siam, in Egypt and in Palestine, in Christianised Europe, in Mahometanised Asia, the worshipper of the Lama, the Faquir, the Bonze, the Talapoin, the Essenc, the Therapeutist, the Monk, and the Dervish, have withdrawn from the society of man, in order to abstract the pure mind from the dominion of foul and corrupting matter. Under each system, the perfection of human nature was estrangement from the influence of the senses,-those senses which were enslaved to the material elements of the world; an approximation to the essence of the Deity, by a total secession from the affairs, the interests, the passions, the thoughts, the common being and nature of man. The practical operation of this elementary principle of Eastern religion has deeply influenced the whole history of man. But it had made no progress in Europe till after the introduction of Christianity. The manner in which it allied itself with, or rather incorporated itself into, a system, to the original nature and design of which it appears altogether foreign, will form a most important and perhaps not uninteresting chapter in the History of Christianity. Celibacy. Celibacy was the offspring of Asceticism, but it does not appear absolutely essential to it; whether insulted nature re-asserts its rights, and reconciles to the practice that which is in apparent opposition to the theory, or whether it revenges, as it were, this rebellion of nature on one point, by its more violent and successful (1) See the tracts of Mahony, Joinville, Hodgson, and Wilson, in the Asiatic Researches; Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost Mongolen. Bergman, Nomadische Streifereyen, etc. (2) Hyde, de Relig. Persarum, p. 13. et alibi, Kleuker, Anhang zum Zendavesta, vol. i. (3) Kleuker, Anhang zum Zendavesta, vol. i. pt. 2. p. 147. De Guigniaut, ubi supra. invasions upon its unconquerable propensities on others. The Muni in India is accompanied by his wife, who shares his solitude, and seems to offer no impediment to his sanctity (1), though in some cases it may be that all connubial intercourse is sternly renounced. In Palestine, the Essene, in his higher state of perfection, stood in direct opposition to the spirit of the books of Moses, on which he still looked with the profoundest reverence, by altogether refraining from marriage. It was perhaps in this form that Eastern Asceticism first crept into Christianity. It assumed the elevating and attractive character of higher personal purity; it drew the line of demarcation more rigidly against the loose morality of the Heathen; it afforded the advantage of detaching the first itinerant preachers of Christianity more entirely from worldly interests; enabled them to devote their whole undistracted attention to the propagation of the Faith, and left them, as it were, more at loose from the world, ready to break the few and slender ties which connected them with it at the first summons to a glorious martyrdom (2). But it was not, as we shall presently observe, till Gnosticism began to exercise its influence on Christianity (3) that, emulous of its dangerous rival, or infected with its foreign opinions, the Church, in its general sentiment, espoused and magnified the pre-eminent virtue of celibacy (4). in Greece The European mind of the older world, as represented by the Unknown Greeks and Romans, repelled for a long time, in the busy turmoil and Rome. of political development, and the absorbing career of war and conquest, this principle of inactivity and secession from the ordinary affairs of life. No sacerdotal caste established this principle of superiority over the active warrior, or even the laborious husbandman. With the citizen of the stirring and factious republics of Greece, the highest virtue was of a purely political and practical character. The whole man was public: his individuality, the sense of which was continually suggested and fostered under the other system, was lost in the member of the commonwealth. That which contributed nothing to the service of the state was held in no re (1) Abandoning all food eaten in towns, and all his household utensils, let him repair to the lonely wood, committing the care of his wife to his sons, or accompanied by her, if she choose to attend him. Sir W. Jones's Menu, vi. 3. I venture to refer to the pathetic tale of the hermit with his wife and son, from the Maha Bharata, in my translations from the Sanskrit. In the very curious account of the Buddhist monks (the Lauavalo-the Schamans) in Porphyrius de Abstinentiâ, lib. iv. 17., the Buddhist ascetic abandons his wife; and this in general agrees with the Buddhist theory. Female contact is unlawful to the Buddha ascetic. See a curious instance in Mr. Wilson's Hindu Theatre -The Toycart. Act viii., sub fine. (2) Clement of Alexandria, however, asserts that St. Paul was really married, but left his wife behind him, lest she should interfere with his ministry. This is bis interpretation of 1 Cor. (3) Tertullian adv. Marc. i. 29. Non tingitur (4) Compare the whole argument of the third book of the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria. In one passage he condemns celibacy, as leading to misanthropy. Συνορῶ δὲ ὅπως τῇ προφάσει τοῦ γάμου οἱ μὲν ἀπεσχημένοι τούτου, μὴ κατὰ τὴν ἁγίαν γνῶσιν, εἰς μισανθρωπίαν ὑπερβύησαν, καὶ τὸ τῆς ἀγάπης οἴχεται παρ' αὐτοῖς. Strom, iii. 9. Plato. Rome. spect. The mind, in its abstracted flights, obtained little honour, it was only as it worked upon the welfare, the amusement, or the glory of the republic, that its dignity was estimated. The philosopher might discuss the comparative superiority of the practical or the contemplative life, but his loftiest contemplations were occupied with realities, or what may be considered idealising those realities to a higher degree of perfection to make good citizens was the utmost ambition of his wisdom, an Utopia was his heaven. The Cynic, who in the East, or in Europe, after it became impregnated with Eastern doctrines, would have retired into the desert to his solitary hermitage, in order to withdraw himself entirely from the common interests, sentiments, and connections of mankind; in Greece, took up his station in the crowded forum, or pitching his tub in the midst of the concourse at the public games, inveighed against the vices end follies of mankind. Plato, if he had followed the natural bent of his genius, might have introduced, and indeed did introduce, as much as the Grecian mind was capable of imbibing, of this theory of the opposition of mind and matter, with its ordinary consequences. The communities of his older master Pythagoras, who had probably visited the East, and drank deep of the Oriental mysticism, approached in some respects nearer to the contemplative character of monastic institutions. But the active mind of the Greek predominated, and the followers of Pythagoras, instead of founding cœnobitic institutions, or secluding themselves in meditative solitude, settled some of the flourishing republics of Magna Græcia. But the great master, in whose steps Plato professed to tread more closely, was so essentially practical and unimaginative, as to bind his followers down to a less Oriental system of philosophy. While, therefore, in his Timæus, Plato attempted to harmonise parts of the cosmogonical theories of Asia with the more humanised mythology of Greece, the work which was more accordant to the genius of his country, was his Republic, in which all his idealism was, as it were, confined to the earth. Even his religion, though of much sublimer cast than the popular superstition, was yet considered chiefly in its practical operation on the welfare of the state. It was his design to elevate humanity to a higher state of moral dignity; to cultivate the material body as well as the immaterial soul, to the height of perfection; not to sever, as far as possible, the connection between these ill-assorted companions, or to withdraw the purer mind from its social and political sphere, into solitary and inactive communion with the Deity. In Rome, the general tendency of the national mind was still more essentially public and political. In the republic, except in a few less distinguished men, the Lælii and the Attici, even their philosophy was an intellectual recreation between the more pressing avocations of their higher duties: it was either to brace and mature the mind for fu |